The Council of the Royal Entomological Society
(RES) welcomes the opportunity to comment on the Government response
to the House of Lords' Select Committee on Science and Technology
Report "What on Earth? The Threat to the Science Underpinning
Conservation."

The Government response is generally positive
in tone, expressing broad support for the view of the Select Committee
and the systematics community that the science of systematics
provides essential and indispensable underpinning for the conservation
of biodiversity. However, the details of the response suggest
that the Government does not acknowledge the evidencesuch
as that concerning insect taxonomy, presented to the Committee
by the RES in January 2002that UK investment and expertise
in taxonomy and systematics have been in decline for many years.
The response makes some generic commitments to increased resources
for conservation and biodiversity, but it makes no specific commitments
to the resources for taxonomy and systematics that were the focus
of the Committee's Report. Thus, the response fails to address
the issue of redressing the past decline in these resources and,
indeed, full implementation of the commitments and actions proposed
by the Government in its response may still allow further decline.

The RES, with a membership of about 1,800 professional
and amateur entomologists worldwide, concurs with the Government's
view that biodiversity conservation and the underpinning science
of systematics are global issues. We are also mindful that, historically,
British naturalistssuch as former RES Fellows Charles Darwin
and Alfred Russel Wallacehave been world leaders in their
field and that throughout the past century biologists in many
countries, especially those of the Commonwealth, have looked to
British taxonomists as key players in this global science. Unfortunately,
the UK's former pre-eminence in this area has been greatly weakened
over the past two decades, as the RES described in its earlier
evidence to the Committee. The Government's argument that perfect
knowledge of all as-yet-undescribed species may be unattainable
is an irrelevant truism (though we would have said "is",
not "may be"): the Committee's concern was not about
perfect and complete taxonomic knowledge but about sufficient
knowledge to support informed decisions and actions in the conservation
of biodiversity.

We note the increased grant-in-aid to three
of the UK's systematics institutions: the Natural History Museum,
and the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew and Edinburgh. We note, however,
that there is no requirement from Government for these additional
resources to be used to support the collections, which is what
the Committee recommended. The focus of new resources on these
three institutions is understandable, not least because of the
size and importance of their existing collections. Nonetheless,
we feel that the Government should be mindful of the resources
needed by other institutions contributing to systematics: the
national museums in Cardiff and Edinburgh, and small specialist
centres of expertise in various research institutes and universities.
The support of specialist centres is especially important for
the newer multidisciplinary approaches to systematics, with small
teams of systematists, ecologists and molecular geneticists (with
concomitant capital resource needs) focusing on specific taxa
or on particular habitats.

The Committee recommended that the Government
should publish a clear concise summary of their policy on biodiversity
conservation. The response lists five international conventions
to which the Government subscribes, and refers to the four separate
national biodiversity strategies for England, Scotland, Wales
and Northern Ireland. This illustrates precisely why the Committee
asked for a single clear summary document.

The request for the HEFCs to consider the role
of the RAE in the decline of systematic biology has been answered
by a non-specific reference to a review of minority subjects.
There is a circularity of argument here, since the point was that
systematics has become a de facto minority subject because
of a progressive decline in public funding. The RES, representing
scholarly and practical interest in insects, which are variously
estimated as comprising 55 per cent to 65 per cent of all living
species, would argue robustly that the Government cannot afford
to view systematic biologywhether by morphological taxonomy
or by molecular analysisas a minority subject since it
underpins most of biological science and is pivotal in addressing
major issues such as conservation and exploitation of biodiversity,
impacts of global environmental change, and integrated management
of pests, vectors and diseases.

Since most insect species are herbivorous, and
many of these feed on one or very few plant species, much entomology
is also dependent on the state of botanical systematics. We cannot
understand the argument for BBSRC not giving academic analogue
status to the Royal Botanic Gardens. The encouragement of joint
institutional projects is to be applauded when there is academic
benefit to be gained by multidisciplinary partnerships. Where
there is no such benefit, joint projects often increase transaction
and administration costs and thus dilute the scientific effort.

We note the positive response to the recommendation
that DEFRA should take the lead in developing a strategic view
of priorities for UK systematics. We also note that the Government
takes the view that DEFRA should step back after an initial period
and that the responsibility for articulating the needs of UK systematics
should lie with the systematics community itself. We might perhaps
be forgiven for pointing out that the Committee's 2002 report,
and the 1992 one prepared under Lord Dainton's chairmanship, are
the result of precisely this process, whereby the systematics
community through their institutions and learned societies gave
evidence to the House of Lords' Select Committee.

Throughout the Government's response there is
an unwillingness to reverse the decline in systematic biology
by exercising any conditionalities or guidance on Government funds
provided to the three major institutions named, or distributed
via the HEFCs, the BBSRC or the Darwin Initiative. Without such
conditionalities or guidance it seems probable that investment
in systematic biology will continue to decline, since it is the
funding priorities of these agencies over past years that has
led to the threat to systematic science identified by the Select
Committee in its Report. There has been a lack of "joined-up
thinking" between the Government departments and funding
agencies that are either responsible for generating taxonomic
knowledge or dependent on such knowledge, and there is no clear
evidence in the Government's response to suggest that this situation
will change.

The RES Council hopes that the Select Committee
will continue to press the Government on those recommendations
where the response has been somewhat equivocal. We take heart
from the generally positive attitude of the Government response
to the identified problems, and in spite of our misgivings that
they may be "too little, too late" we hope that the
medium-term initiatives that are being pursued will slow or halt
the decline in the UK's systematics science base.